This panel approaches hospitality in the literature classroom through Lauren Groff’s fiction. Groff’s novels, The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, each engage with acts of welcome, exclusion, refuge, and care in differing ways. How can educators best use Groff’s work within a classroom model of intellectual hospitality?

This panel is interested in papers that model the integration of formal literary analysis and inclusive, discussion-based pedagogy about one or more of Groff’s fictional texts. How does her fiction encourage students to recognize how narrative techniques shape ethical encounters between characters and readers alike in ways that are welcoming into the classroom experience, into fictional worlds, and into literary studies? How can a richer appreciation for hospitality as both a critical framework and a pedagogical practice lead to deeper understandings of the purpose of fiction? 

Submit proposals though SAMLA website at https://southatlanticmla.org/